


Nos mirábamos

by zempasuchil



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-11
Updated: 2009-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-18 13:17:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zempasuchil/pseuds/zempasuchil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you and I are tied by more than haciendas</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nos mirábamos

under winter skies  
the reflecting pool turns dark  
and in it myself

_

 

 _El espejo de Narciso no fue espejo del vidrio. En el bosque encontré un espejo en la naturaleza, imperfecto y oscuro, pero por ocultar la sombra contiene más que imagen. Yo moreno con piel canela, tú mas pálido pero tras la piel los mismos ojos. Nos encontrábamos otros pero solos en la llanura, en la montana, en el campo, nos encontrábamos nosotros mismos._

 _  
_

The mirror of Narcissus was not a glass mirror. In the woods he found a mirror in nature, imperfect and dark, but in obscuring the shadow contained more than image. I, brown, with cinnamon skin; you, more pale but beyond the skin the same eyes. We found each other Others but alone together on the plain, on the mountain, in the fields, we found each other ourselves.

_

 

a farmer in the field  
bends low to work the white grains  
into his brown palm

man is what he eats.  
you and I are tied by more  
than haciendas

_

 

 _Me mostraste una foto de Fuji, nada como he visto, pero ya sólo un pico en el horizonte. Aquí no hay horizonte que no es la cordillera o el monte. Pero todavía te creíste superior y de verdad tu piel se mostró. Estas cosas no cambian edad por edad, independencia peruana o no._

 _En Lima vivías y en Lima vives. No eres agricultor arrendatario jamás, pero yo trabajo en la misma manera como siempre. No finjas considerarnos iguales cuando comes el arroz que cultivo._

 _  
_

You showed me a photo of Fuji, nothing like I've seen, but still only a peak on the horizon. Here there is no horizon that is not mountain range or jungle. But you still believed yourself superior, and truly your skin showed it. These things don't change age to age, Peruvian independence or no.

In Lima you lived and in Lima you still live. You aren't a tenant farmer anymore, but I work in the same way as always. Don't pretend to consider us equals when you eat the rice I grow.

_

 

like a reed you bowed  
to the storm of war, but I  
was like the pine tree  
when Germany asked for my  
jews I never gave them up

_

 

 _No me entiendes, Japón. Yo soy América y él me ha robado de mi nombre. ¿Cuando me dijo mandarle los japoneses que podría decir? Siempre he estado en la mano apretada de los Europeos, en la de Monroe, en la de Theodore Roosevelt, y ahora en la de FDR. Cuando se llama América, dice – Vosotros sois míos y quizás un día feliz seréis yo._

 _Pero hay algo que no entiendo, Japón: no me dejaste aunque te dejé._

 _  
_

You don't understand me, Japan. I am America and he has robbed me of my name. When he told me to send him the Japanese what could I say? I have always been in the clenched fist of the Europeans, of Monroe, of Theodore Roosevelt, and now of FDR. When he calls himself America, he says, "You are mine and maybe one happy day you will be me."

But there is something I don't understand, Japan: you didn't leave me even when I left you.

_

 

your eyes bottomless  
I only knew your skin as  
dirty, poor. but then  
you showed me the highest peaks  
and I was breathless for it

_

 

 _No finjas entenderme, Japón. El mundo me ha creado mi juventud, y tú, sigues sin edad pero sin olvidar. Yo fue un imperio magnifico como no quieren imaginar, y me mataron, casi me mataron, como perro enferma. Y ahora soy joven en sus ojos porque sueñan que me mataron pero no es la verdad. Todavía recuerdo._

Don't pretend to understand me, Japan. The world has created my youth, and you, you go on without age but without forgetting. I was a magnificent empire as they do not want to imagine, and they killed me, they almost killed me, like a sick dog. And now I am young in their eyes because they dream that they killed me but that is not true. I still remember.

_

 

empires crumble: fire  
flood or pox, or shadows on  
a thousand x-rays.

take slavery to  
have industry. let them think  
us dark no longer.

_

 

 _Jamás tenemos nada que perder, salvo nuestras cadenas._

We have nothing left to lose but our chains.

_

 

in Fujimori  
we rule, I am your hostage.  
what have we become?

_

 

 _Te dije una vez – nos mirábamos. No me entiendes, Japón. Significa o – we were watching each other – o – we were watching ourselves. ¿Cuál es?_

I told you once, _nos mirábamos_. You don’t understand me, Japan. It means either "we were watching each other" or "we were watching ourselves." Which is it?

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Peru is the first Latin American country that had diplomatic relations with Japan. They were also the first country to begin accepting Japanese immigrants, as the Japanese economy was in trouble and had farmers to spare. Once the farmers had earned enough to stop being tenants, they moved to the cities.
> 
> When the US began rounding up the Japanese for its internment camps, it asked Latin America too. Peru handed them over. Which is not to say Latin America hated FDR; they actually quite liked him. Not TR, though, they pretty much hated that guy.
> 
> Today, Peru has the second largest Japanese population in Latin America, next to Brazil. Its Japanese-Peruvian citizens are in the cities, and are generally well-to-do, occupying white collar jobs.
> 
> Alberto Fujimori is the Japanese-Peruvian ex-president of Peru, credited or charged with ridding Peru of terrorism. The Shining Path Maoist guerrilla group is charged with taking 20,000 lives over 12 years. The Japanese embassy hostage crisis began on December 17, 1996, when fourteen Tupac-Amaru Revolutionary Movement militants (a Marxist-Leninist group) seized the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima during a party. Fujimori's efforts, largely successful, to eradicate this violence have resulted in charges that the military offensive killed many innocent citizens, mostly poor mountain-dwellers, caught in the crossfire.


End file.
